Despite good news on jobs, crime and inflation, various scrapes left the
Government looking foolish last week. Do the Tories’ problems lie with the
man at the top, asks Iain Martin

When David Cameron delivers his speech today, his first on crime since becoming Prime Minister, he will be keen to put the difficult events of recent days behind him. He wants to map out a more robust approach to criminals, to show that he understands public concerns. The emphasis on rehabilitation, caricatured as “hug a hoodie” in the early days of his leadership, is to be replaced with much spikier rhetoric. The new slogan devised by the Prime Minister’s advisers to sell his “mug a hoodie” assault on ne’er-do-wells is “Tough but intelligent”.

Tough and intelligent are not the words being used by Tories to describe their party’s high command right now. Lord Tebbit, the tough-minded veteran of Margaret Thatcher’s governments, was scathing yesterday: “The abiding sin of the Government is not that some ministers are rich but that it seems unable to manage its affairs competently.” He said the Prime Minister should impose “some managerial discipline not just on his colleagues but on himself”.

“A bit of a shambles,” is the verdict of one MP when asked for his view of Number 10’s performance. “It’s pretty dire,” says another. Even a Conservative loyalist adds: “This Government is doing a lot of important work on education, welfare and the economy. If little of it gets through to the country because of avoidable stupid mistakes in other areas then it is very annoying.” Indeed, last week was a particular low point for Mr Cameron, precisely because the scrapes his Government got into drowned out a string of positive statistics which suggested significant progress is being made.

Official figures showed unemployment continues to fall as the private sector creates the jobs which Tory ministers said it would.

Government borrowing for September was also lower than expected, even if it still came in at £12.8billion. Inflation and crime fell. And Theresa May, the Home Secretary, refused to allow the extradition to the US of the computer hacker Gary McKinnon, fulfilling a promise made before the election and delighting campaigners.

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Yet somehow, Number 10 still ended up in crisis mode over “Plebgate” and a poorly planned foray by the Prime Minister into energy policy. He said the Government would legislate to force energy firms to put consumers on the lowest tariffs, an announcement which came as a surprise to the Energy Secretary and the rest of the Cabinet. Cue several days of chaos as Number 10 sought to clarify the position.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister was preoccupied dealing with the demise of a key colleague’s career. Mr Cameron had staked a lot on holding on to Andrew Mitchell, the bicycling Tory chief whip who resigned on Friday after swearing at the police a month ago when they insisted he dismount and use the pedestrian entrance to Downing Street. He has been replaced by the urbane Sir George Young, 71, who also rides a bicycle but has such impeccable manners that he can be relied upon not to rant at constables doing their job.

The incessant publicity over Mr Mitchell has played to stereotypes about senior Tories being out of touch. It has depressed MPs who thought the Prime Minister was poised to lead his party to a recovery. The Tories left their conference in Birmingham in relatively good shape and somewhat re-energised. One ministers says: “At the conference Europe didn’t blow up, which I had thought it would. Gay marriage didn’t turn into a row. The Prime Minister’s speech had strong traces of conservatism in it. I guess eyes were taken off the ball afterwards.” Cumulatively, the impression created last week was of a team with chaotic tendencies which cannot get the basics of political management and presentation right. It is a situation that Labour is only too happy to exploit. Labour leader Ed Miliband – who has very little to offer yet in the way of specific policy proposals – is determined to keep hammering away at the idea that Mr Cameron is somehow not up to it.

On Saturday, addressing a trade union rally against cuts, where he was booed by sections of the audience for even daring to suggest there should be some spending constraint, the Labour leader declared: “The trouble with this Government is that, while they think they are born to rule, it turns out they are not very good at it.” For Labour – until relatively recently commanded by Gordon Brown, architect of the supposed “end of boom and bust” – to be in a position where its spokesmen can, with a straight face, accuse the Conservatives of incompetence, shows how far Mr Cameron has let things slip.

Some worried Tories say the answer is a radical reorganisation of the team of aides around the Prime Minister. “I’m afraid they are a bunch of gentlemen amateurs and chums,” says a senior Tory. “David needs better people, who can get it together.” Those calling for Mr Cameron to orchestrate a clear-out are likely to be disappointed, however. He is notoriously loyal, to the point of obstinacy, when his judgment about people is questioned. There has anyway recently been an internal reshuffle in Number 10, with Ed Llewellyn, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, standing back from domestic matters to concentrate on foreign and defence policy. The hope is that Oliver Dowden, the new deputy chief of staff, will assert authority in the domestic field.

Perhaps Mr Cameron will decide to jettison his communications chief Craig Oliver, the former BBC executive who is the object of intense criticism by some Tory MPs for his perceived failure to properly coordinate the Government’s public relations effort.

But blaming aides is one of the oldest attempted get-outs in government.

The supporters of Nicholas II of Russia used to say that the Tsar was merely badly advised, and that if only it was possible to get to the ruler in person, he could be made to see sense. In reality, it was the Tsar himself who was out of his depth and the Russian Revolution soon followed. Mr Cameron is not facing a leadership coup, for now. As yet, there is no rival in a position to strike. However, others think the crisis is much deeper than one of management, reshuffling advisers and speculation about alternative leaders.

“We have a serious issue with our political class,” says a disillusioned young Tory MP. “Running the country are three people, Cameron, Osborne and Clegg, who have never had a proper job. This applies to the Labour Party too. People leave university, become advisers and the next thing you know they’re PM and the government is the first thing they’ve ever run.

It is as though politics is a game to them rather than being about ideas and vision.”

Mr Cameron has long emphasised pragmatism to the point where many wonder what, if anything, he believes. This means that when he encounters difficulties – as Prime Ministers tend to, especially mid-term – there is not a cadre of Conservatives keen to defend him. If they felt he was engaged in a great mission to restore the country to health they might be more inclined to overlook errors. Many in his party yearn for a strong lead and a more principled approach.

Ironically, Mr Cameron actually showed the way ahead in his recent speech in Birmingham. It was arguably the best address of his career, as he concentrated on big ideas. For perhaps the first time he succeeded in explaining clearly that economic dynamism and social compassion are not mutually exclusive notions, but two sides of the same coin. A country which wants social improvement must generate the wealth to pay for it by enabling a more dynamic private sector and encouraging work, innovation and aspiration. The Miliband mantra of even more borrowing and government interference will create neither the economy nor the society Britain needs to prosper.

Refreshingly, in Birmingham the endless tactical game-playing, favoured by the Chancellor George Osborne in particular, was cast aside by the Prime Minister for an authentically Conservative analysis of the challenges facing Britain and the opportunities this presents. It won him excellent reviews and rather astonished his critics by virtue of its clarity and ambition.

If Mr Cameron really wants to get away from the nightmares of last week then he needs to do more than just bring order to his Number 10 operation. He should re-read his own conference speech and find ways of turning more of those exciting ideas into reality.

As a Tory peer said to me several days after Mr Cameron spoke to his party: “Great speech. Now do it.”